More than 192 million domain names have been registered through the interactions of Registry Operators, Registrars, and Registrants. Registrants are the individuals or organizations that hold the right to use a specific domain name. Registrants gain this right by registering the domain name with a Registrar. Registrars are accredited by an international body called the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and compete with one another to get the business of Registrants. A Registry as defined by ICANN is the authoritative, master database of all domain names registered in each Top Level Domain (TLD). A Registry Administrator or Operator keeps the master database for the TLD and also generates the Domain Name System (DNS) “zone file” for the TLD which allows computers to route Internet traffic to and from top-level domains anywhere in the world. The data of TLD zone files describe a portion of the domain name space for specific TLDs and contain information needed to resolve domain names to Internet Protocal (IP) numbers. Root servers contain the root zone file which gives the IP addresses of all the TLD zone files. The root zone file contains a list of names and numeric IP addresses of the authoritative DNS servers for all TLDs. This includes the global registries such as .com, .org, etc. as well as country-specific registries such as .fr (France), .cn (China), etc. This information is critical and if it is not 100% correct or if it is unclear, a key registry many not be locatable on the Internet. In the zone file for a particular TLD there will be entries for the various second-level domain names in that TLD. Such an entry for a particular second-level domain will contain pointers to the nameservers for that second-level domain name. Each such nameserver will contain a zone file relating to that particular second-level domain.
Zone files contain mappings between domain names and IP addresses in the form of a sequence of entries for resource records (RR). Resource records are defined by descriptions including the domain name, a time to live (TTL) field, the record class, the record type, and other type-specific data. A TTL field indicates the amount of time that a record exists before a domain name client must discard the record and re-resolve the domain name—that is, to find the corresponding IP address. Zone files specify a Start of Authority (SOA) record. The SOA record includes the name of the authoritative master DNS that supplied the data for the zone, the email address of the responsible administrator for the management of the DNS, and the serial number of the zone file which is incremented each time the zone file is changed.
Each top-level domain also has associated with it some other databases. One of these is a “Whois” database which gives contact information for each second-level domain in the top-level domain. Another is a database that keeps track (for the registry) of the particular registrar that is responsible for each second-level domain.
Historically, and as shown in FIG. 1, a Registrant 133 registers a domain name or domain names with a Registrar 134 or Registrars and provides the Registrar 134 with various contact and technical information that makes up the registration. The Registrar 134 maintains records with this information and sends it to be stored in the central directory known as the Registry. As mentioned above, a zone file contains domain names, their associated names server names and the IP addresses for those names servers. The Registry provides other computers on the Internet the information necessary to access content associated with the domain name. The Registry Operator 136 updates TLD zone files for its respective TLDs. However, the Registry (by which we mean Registry Operator) does not interact directly with the Registrant. It instead waits for the Registrar to pass on any information it is provided by the Registrant. It is possible for a Registrant to hold rights to several domain names that have the same Top-level Domain (TLD) such as .com or .net, which are tied to the same Registry, however, each domain name may be administered by a different Registrar. In cases where a Registrant has registered multiple domain names with multiple Registrars, should a Registrant want to make a general update (such as an address update) to all of its domain name registrations with the same TLD, the Registrant would be required to send the request to multiple Registrars to do so. The same would be true should the Registrant desire to change nameservers, cancel or renew a domain name, transfer a domain name to another Registrant, or other similar administrative tasks. It would be desirable to provide a more centrally controlled interface allowing a Registrant to process similar changes to multiple domain name registrations all at once, or at least in batches.
The foregoing example of the related art and limitations related therewith are intended to be illustrative and not exclusive. Other limitations of the related art will become apparent to the alert reader upon a reading of the specification and a study of the drawings.